portrait with beret Painting

I seek to create a sense of theatricality and performance within my work. Orientating figures into a stage-managed scene that alludes to a narrative or parable. The protagonists are often aloof; emotionally and physically absorbed in their painted worlds. It is interesting for me to test the limits of emotional connection that we as spectators can feel looking at these people; how strange to be absorbed in something alluding to life yet silent, still, and artificial.   I like to combine images from magazine, books and the internet and place into imaginative settings to alter the original meanings. It is important to me that these two aspects relate closely with one another in colour, tone, and rhythm. I allow the image to develop as one coherent whole as I paint, like a photograph becoming developed in fluid.